John Perkins, 'Most Influential Black Christian Leader Since King,' Nears Journey's End at 95

John M. Perkins — the civil rights leader, author, and community developer whom University of Virginia professor Charles Marsh called 'the most influential African American Christian leader since Dr. King' — is 95 years old and under hospice care, drawing prayers and tributes from across the American church. Perkins, who survived a near-fatal beating by Mississippi police in 1970 and went on to found the Christian Community Development Association, spent a lifetime proving that the gospel demands not just personal conversion but structural transformation — that following Jesus means entering the places of deepest brokenness and refusing to leave. His three R's of community development — relocation, reconciliation, and redistribution — became a framework that shaped a generation of Christian activists, urban missionaries, and church planters. As the American church fractures along political and racial lines, Perkins's life stands as a rebuke to the idea that faithfulness requires choosing between justice and evangelism — he insisted on both, and the communities he built are his testimony.